


The Scholar

by royalbluesnowwhite (serafinaspiccolo)



Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, grammatical inaccuracies for dramatic effect, offensive jeans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serafinaspiccolo/pseuds/royalbluesnowwhite
Summary: Just a mini drabble set during Marisa and Mary's meeting.Implied marysa.
Relationships: Marisa Coulter/Mary Malone
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	The Scholar

Marisa stands. She stands in her strange pink blouse and uncomfortably pulled back hair. She stands frozen to the spot in this curious place with its ugly simplicity and scratchy carpet floor. This workplace. The private office of this woman, this _female scholar._ A scholar Marisa thinks is unworthy of the title if her office is anything to judge her by. This room looks more like it belongs to a botanist or a collector of cardboard boxes and stupid frivolous trinkets. She is offensively untidy. There's paper strewn all over her desk, over almost every flat surface in the room. One pile of papers and books, messily stacked and obviously clumsily thumbed through too often, is so off-kilter it looks as though it may fall. Marisa hopes it will. She hopes it topples and knocks over that ugly miniature tree and smashes her machine to pieces. Her ugly, bulky strange machine. Her books are ugly too. They line one entire wall in poorly organised cubby holes and they're- they're _shiny_. Their spines are painted with gaudy colours and big crude titles. Some are upright, most are not. She could read the covers if they weren't obscured by the tacky white sheen of cheap material. The desk is shiny, the shelves that the shiny books sit upon are shiny, even her writing instruments are reflecting the light. Every single thing in this office is mocking her, showing off, reflecting the sun at her from all angles, begging for her attention. It's tasteless and it's over the top. 

The chair offered to her looks uncomfortable but Marisa so badly wants to sit. She wants to sit and put her head in her hands. She wants to bite into her palms and scream so hard she draws blood. She's furious. But she doesn't sit, she doesn't scream, she barely even moves. She simply stands there. And _she_ watches her. And Marisa watches her back. 

Her mouth is moving but Marisa cannot process the sound. She can only see the movement, the pink shimmer of her makeup, the deep crease that cuts down the middle of her bottom lip where it has been absentmindedly bitten too many times. She's asking questions. Too many questions. The impertinence of it, the very nerve. How dare she behave this way? How is she able to take control like this?  
Marisa is dumbstruck.  
It is the energy she carries. It is loud and unashamed and intelligent and it seeps out of her everywhere. It runs out of her mouth and bashes against the glass wall between them. It lives in her clothes, casual and common and tasteless. In her unfastened suit jacket and her _jeans._ It is in her hair. Her red, curly hair that she has made no effort to style. It's unruly and untamed, it suits her, and it's beautiful. She's beautiful. She's so, so beautiful. It's such an easy look on her. Then again, freedom looks good on anybody. Oh, how Marisa wishes she possessed what this woman seems to take so for granted. What she brandishes so haphazardly with her style and her mouth and her eyes. Her pretty blue eyes that are currently wide open like an owl's and full of apprehension. She's stopped asking questions now and Marisa can tell that she's making her scared. She expects it to make her feel better but it feels different. It feels bad. It feels wrong when it's _her._ There's a moment of silence and then she starts speaking again but Marisa can't take any more of her questions. She can hardly see for the fog clouding her vision but she's still sharp. The moment the scholar's back is turned, she storms out of the room and back out of the building, across this gaudy, tacky copy of Oxford and back to Boreal. Back to normality, back to her life, her stupid, stinted, _wasted_ life.


End file.
